Tips and Tricks

Tuesday, January 08, 2008

"TechCrunch UK’s Mike Butcher is reporting that Google, IBM and Verisign are in late stage discussions with the OpenID Foundation.

This comes on the same day that Google, Facebook and Plaxo joined the DataPortability Workgroup. Google has been testing OpenID with its Blogger platform since late last year, but this is said to be a more general implementation across core Google properties.

OpenID was originally developed by Brad Fitzpatrick, previously at LiveJournal and now at Google. It’s likely he’s pushing this internally. If he gets Google on board, then OpenID has very rosy prospects ahead."

Thursday, December 20, 2007

Finally Google took the first step towards OpenID. Now, bloggers can post their authenticated comments using any OpenID enabled service. Its been a long wait to see Google enter the OpenID field. What we still have to see is Google acting as an OpenID provider. As Google has a large number of users and they have the same id for most of their own applications, shifting to OpenID will presumably be the most convenient to internet users. And now, we see the first step towards it - Support of OpenID for bloggers.....

Last night when I was trying to install Fedora Core 7 on a Dell Inspiron 1520, annoyingly I was stuck up at the Linux installation startup. The installation procedure had not even reached running anaconda. Instead it stuck up saying it did not recognized the DVD/CD drive and needs a device driver for the same. Here's the quick solution I adopted to resolve this. It might be helpful in for some other models of Dell too.

Create an iso of the FC7 Linux DVD. Copy the iso in a FAT32 partition on your hard disk. This needs to be done as it does not picks up the iso from ntfs drives. Now, when you start installing Fedora Core 7, it will again ask for the DVD/CD device driver. Instead select the source of your Linux as the partition having the iso image of the DVD. And it moves on to anaconda. :-)

Although after installation Linux was still not able to recognize DVD drive, the device driver can be downloaded and installed now as you have a working Linux ready. :-)

Monday, December 17, 2007

Finally an official report came for Udi Manber, VP Engineering of Google of the Google Knol. The definition and overview of Knol clearly reveals that it will be a major competitor of Wikipedia. So Google is now on a clear cut war with Wikipedia.

Google's statement about a knol is"A knol on a particular topic is meant to be the first thing someone who searches for this topic for the first time will want to read. The goal is for knols to cover all topics, from scientific concepts, to medical information, from geographical and historical, to entertainment, from product information, to how-to-fix-it instructions."

This is in no way different from a Wikipedia article. A Wikipedia article on a particular topic is the first thing someone who searches for this topic for the first time will want to read.

Even if Google does really want to come in this field, it should provide something which is different from wikipedia. There is simply no need of creating a parallel of Wikipedia with users getting confused where to look for the correct information.

But Google thinks it in a different way. As always, they have indicated it even in the official report."Competition of ideas is a good thing"And sure it is... ;)

These are a few most talked about protocols and specifications on the web for the past few days. Still, biggies like Google and Yahoo are not involved fully on these. RSS is the only one which has been fully adopted by everyone. Though, Yahoo uses the hcard microformat, Google is still to support it. OpenID is also not yet supported by any of them.Owing to the popularity OpenID is getting, it is one of the hottest features to be adopted by them. Amongst these web 2.0 protocols, oauth seems to have a better future as it is a mix of all the current API standards and companies would be opting for it to increase their presence. APML would help a person save a lot of time online.Considering the amount of time a user spends on the network of Google and Yahoo, APML can be used to capture the interests of users and then provide service to the user based on his likes and dislikes. The social networking websites can effectively use the XFN. I see the way companies can improve their market share using these. But the question is, do they see it?

Wednesday, September 12, 2007

OpenID is a decentralized system that reduces the number of username and password combinations you have to remember for each and every web site that demands them. Most sites today have their own process of Signing Up. They ask the user to sign up and register if the user does not have an existing account and to identify themselves or to sign up with an existing account on the server.

OpenID is a solution for creating accounts on various servers and identifying oneself. Create one OpenID and use it to login in various sites. Its simple, fast, easy and secure.

There are many sites which now support OpenID login. A list of this can be found here:http://www.lifewiki.net/openid/OpenIDConsumers

However, these are not the only sites which support OpenID. And to add, new sites are integrating OpenID concept. I just hope players like Google, Microsoft and Yahoo! join the OpenID community.

The list of OpenID providers:http://openid.net/wiki/index.php/OpenIDServers